Archive for the ‘Emergency Preparedness’ Category

It should come as no surprise to readers of this website that having arrived late in the election season with a chance for Republicans to win the White House, and perhaps strengthen in Congress, with taking the Senate an at least plausible proposition, the turn-coats, the RINOs, the opportunists and the skunks will now come out of the woodwork to sabotage as many Republicans as possible. Every media venue is beginning to drag them out from behind the curtains, and while a mighty wind struck New Jersey on Monday, an blowhard nearly equal to Hurricane Sandy both in breadth and volume sought on Wednesday to capitalize on the storm’s aftermath, inviting the man from the city that blows hard seemingly in perpetuity to join him on the Jersey shore. Quite a couple this pair of wind generators made, missing no photo-op to look very gubernatorial and presidential, respectively. Much like Barack Obama claims it’s wrong to politicize Libya (while politicizing Libya,) Governor Christie took full advantage of the opportunity to improve his own position with New Jersey voters, and yes, maybe even voters nationally, with an eye toward 2016.

Naturally, for that to work out, Romney would need to lose next week, and by playing Oliver Hardy to Obama’s Stanley Laurel, Christie did his best to position himself in all respects. Of course, this is merely the presidential scene. Other saboteurs were widely afoot. Tucker Carlson did his level best to undercut Richard Mourdock in Indiana, suggesting that the Senate candidate cannot win, a fact that the long-time Dick Lugar protoge apparently finds satisfying, so it’s what I suggested long ago: He’s wealthy enough not to be worried about Obama-care. To quote one-term Texas Governor Maw Richards, “he can’t hepp it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Naturally, after his blatant sabotage on FoxNews today, I’d suggest that rather than his foot, it had been Carlson’s head, though stuck in a different orifice.

I hope my fellow conservatives are working hard to get out the vote for our Senate candidates, because whatever happens at the top of the ticket, we simply must take the Senate. I’m not saying Mitt Romney will lose, as he in fact looks fairly strong at the moment, but let’s be honest about how things will go even if he wins but Harry Reid maintains control of the Senate. With Boehner in the House, conservative concerns are certain to get rolled at every turn if we don’t re-take the Senate.

I expect that in the days to come, we will begin to see a parade of RINOs stepping out to deal dirt to conservative candidates. The establishment wing of the party doesn’t take defeat easily, and while we conservatives are always expected to rally to their candidates, they never seem to return the favor, instead undercutting conservatives. Some have speculated the Christie’s actions are part of a ploy to somehow sabotage Obama, but that’s not it at all. That’s far too complicated a ploy for the simple optics that Christie is gaining from this maneuver. He’s simply an opportunist, and since his is a deep blue state, this is a way of staying in favor with the people of New Jersey, in part to position himself for his re-election and in part in case he makes a bid for the White House in 2016 in the wake of a Romney loss his actions today were intended to assist. Quite simply, this kills two birds with one stone, and I knew when he erupted yesterday about not giving “a damn” for the politics, that just like Obama, a political move on his part was imminent. If it hadn’t been all about political “optics,” he wouldn’t have spent all his time on photo-ops. Whatever other “October Surprises” might be in the offing, this one was entirely of Christie’s making.

As this post goes to press, almost as if by way of confirming my thesis, both New York’s Mayor Nanny Doomberg and retired General and affirmative action beneficiary Colin Bowell have shockingly endorsed Barack Obama. I expect my readers to take it easy after that news as the mainstream media attempts to portray this as a surprise. Meanwhile, back on the East Coast, now that one of the mighty windbags has departed the scene, things aren’t going so well as thousands upon thousands of residents find themselves without shelter or food, and more than three million are still without power. They’re fighting over fuel at the now sparse gas stations. They’re siphoning it out of cars for use in generators, showing the utter lack of preparedness of so many governments in the region. Once again, the coward-in-chief is off in Las Vegas. I guess when the real hard work needs to be done, Obama can be counted on to arrive in the city he told people they ought not go.

I expect the parade of RINO back-stabbers to continue through the weekend. It’s what they do.

I recommend my readers check out this piece over the UK Telegraphon what is going on with our friends across the pond. They’re experiencing a fuels shortage to the extent that the government is being urged to begin an emergency program of rationing. The issue began when a union of truck drivers who deliver fuels threatened to go on strike, and a government official, Francis Maude, a Cabinet Officer advised people to fill up their tanks and store fuel in storage containers. Quite naturally, the people responded by doing just that, emptying filling stations everywhere. While telling the people not to panic, the British government incited a panic, and the resultant run on fuels, in a shortage so severe that first responders there are having difficulty finding fuel to run their ambulances. What we should learn from all of this are at least two important lessons, and I hope my readers will take note: Governments cause panics by their actions, but more importantly, our fuel supply is more vulnerable than most people think, because of the structure of the supply chain.

If you drive to your favorite filling station, most days there will be no problem. You’ll simply dispense the fuel, pay and depart, and there’s no fuss about any of it. What most people don’t realize is that the amount of fuel out at filling stations is based on the expected, ordinary quantity demanded, and while there may be some small amount in surplus, it’s really not much more than a day or two extra under ordinary conditions. Fuels are dangerous to store in large quantities, and EPA regulations have made the job harder, but most important is the notion of just-in-time inventory management which means retailers don’t keep more on hand than they will immediately sell under normal conditions.

The reason this matters to consumers is that it means that any small fluctuation upward in quantity demanded can quickly lead to a shortage. As we should have learned in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, anything that causes a shortage at the margins in one locale can quickly spread to others. If there’s a run on fuels in just a few key locations locally, it can spread like a wildfire as displaced customers shift their demand to other locations, driving those to shortage, and thus pushing the shortage around. As the shortages spread, panic takes hold, so that people descend on every location for fuel they can find.

This tells us a little bit about the psychology of the market and why such shortages can materialize for no apparent good reason, looking at the matter on a macro scale: Is there enough fuel for immediate demands? Had people simply gone on with their ordinary purchasing patterns, would there have been a serious market-wide shortage? No. The problem lies in the fact that people can be moved by fear and uncertainty regarding the immediate future. The notion that some days in the future, tanker drivers in the UK might be on strike, and might cause a shortage, was enough to cause a government official to make remarks that started a panic. Even if the strike never materializes, it will take days or even weeks for the UK to restore things to the normal flow.

What this also should remind us is that on-hand supplies at retail outlets is never nearly what the whole market might demand at once. At any one time, the capacity of every filling station is just a small fraction of the total capacity of every vehicle’s tank. When everybody goes to fill up at the same time, the situation is made evident, because the on-hand retail supply can in no way match the condensed time frame of such a move by consumers to tank-up. In the UK, they’re openly talking about rationing now as a way to restore the normal flow.

The more interesting part about this problem is the human psychology implied: When faced with potential shortages, we tend to horde in response, and this can clearly add to the problems.In the US, where we are much more dependent on fuels to maintain the course of our daily lives, commute and travel distances being so much greater, we’re especially vulnerable to panics generated by short-run, geographically-limited marginal shortages. For this reason, the US can be subject to very small-scale shortages turning into regional or even nationwide problems. It doesn’t take much. If a few gas stations over a metropolitan area run short, it can ripple outward and spread like a virus. People begin panic-buying almost as soon as they hear that there is a shortage somewhere nearby.

This is why our current situation is actually so precarious. It doesn’t take much but a day or two of delayed replenishing in distribution to cause a serious problem. This is also another reason we should seek to increase not only the amount of oil we produce domestically, but also to increase our refining capacity. The situation underway in the UK is small compared to the impact such a panic could cause here, primarily because the geographical expanse of our country means that public mass transit isn’t economically viable in most areas. In short, we need our fuel, and our lives have evolved to depend upon it. It’s bad enough when governments do idiotic things like start a panic, but what’s worse is when they’re so utterly unprepared when they happen without government prompting.

The American people should be made aware that panic hoarding only worsens the problem and increases the span of time before a situation driven by natural disasters is resolved. The goal in such a situation should be to delay purchase as long as possible, but that’s so counter to our nature that I don’t expect many people to react in perfectly rational ways. The other problem we face is political, in that too few Americans understand just how fragile this system has become, and with it, all the dependencies upon which it relies. If more Americans understood just how reliant they really are on an energy supply to maintain their standard of living, they might bring more pressure on politicians to get out of the way.

Leave it to the good people of Wyoming to bring enough pressure to bear on their politicians that they have now actually begun to prepare for the worst crises that could arise, as they consider the condition of the Federal government, its debt, and the potential for civil unrest. They’re even considering what to do about their armed forces should the worst occur, and this landlocked state is now considering how they would acquire an aircraft carrier. That may seem just a little hard to swallow for some, but I think it speaks to the willingness of their legislature to prepare for the worst. I believe the measures are prudent, and if only we could get the politicians in Washington DC to see it their way, there might well be a chance we’d avoid at least any “man-caused disasters.” The sneering elites in Washington think this is high comedy, but for down-to-Earth Americans, not only in Wyoming, but elsewhere across the expanses of “fly-over country,” there is a keen awareness of how much trouble we’re facing.

In Washington DC, they have your money upon which to rely in order to continue their spending habits. Out in Wyoming and around the country, state and local governments have seen a general reduction in revenues. Property values are down, so property tax receipts are also reduced, and with so many homes in foreclosure, there’s been a corresponding rise in delinquency on property taxes owed. In Washington DC, they just print up another batch, and they don’t have to worry about the cash because they can always raise taxes, or borrow more. This is at the heart of the disconnect between the permanent ruling class in Washington DC that sees no emergency looming, but instead suspects it can make due on your back indefinitely.

Thankfully for the people of Wyoming, their legislature is at least considering the worst scenarios. While we can ridicule the idea of a Wyoming armed force including an aircraft carrier, perhaps we shouldn’t be laughing, and instead checking with our own state and local governments to find out what sort of preparations they’re making. Chances are, they’re not. At this point, while Wyoming commissions a little money with which to study the matter, the Federal Government continues to the brink. Spending, and borrowing, and regulating our lives has become its sole purpose judging by what they’ve done in the last few decades, but when it comes to the things it ought to do, the Federal government has no shortage of excuses.

Rather than mocking the Wyoming legislature for its so-called “Doomsday Bill,” perhaps the thing to do is to instead ask our own state and local officials what they’re doing to prepare. They’ll baffle you with their local Office of Emergency Management, but I doubt any of them are thinking as broadly or constructively as the legislature of Wyoming. They’re considering things like issuing their own currency if it comes to that, and how to deal with the worst behaviors of other men. That’s not a bad starting point, and I wonder if while the elites in Washington DC are laughing now, should the worst arise, would the people of Wyoming have the last laugh. It’s time for the laughing boys in DC to get the hint and take their cue from the folks in Wyoming, and begin to prepare this country for the hell that it coming, and that they’re creating. They won’t, of course.

We are under constant attack by Barack Obama’s administration. He is rapidly converting the United States into a vulnerable, weak nation that cannot defend itself against external threats, but polices its own people with an iron fist. Evidence of this thesis comes from all quarters, and conservatives are placing all their hopes in the coming presidential election. The thinking is that if only we can get the right candidate, and if only we can nominate and elect that candidate, once in office, that person will change everything. Ladies and gentlemen, if you believe it will be so simple, you’re sadly mistaken. This isn’t going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen without pain, but if you want to defeat Barack Obama, you will need to learn one word, and make it stick for all times, irrespective of the cost. You must learn to say “no.”

The Obama radicals intend to overturn 230 years of liberty. They now inspect brown-bag lunches brought to school by small children, making sure the meal complies with the Department of Health and Human Services(or Michelle Obama.) There is only one way to defeat such a thing, and parents in the country need to find some ‘intestinal fortitude’ and take ownership over the lives of their children, as should have been the case all along. Say “No.” Don’t send your kids to these schools. Organize sick-outs. Organize whatever is needed. All you need to do to stop this is to refuse to comply with it. Refuse.

Obamacare can be defeated in exactly the same way. Refuse. Refuse to buy insurance. Refuse to pay their fines. Refuse. The only word you need is “no,” but saying it, and sticking to it is the harder part of the chore. Everything the leftists do requires your participation and consent. Don’t give it. Don’t participate. Then their only option is to round you all up, jail you, or kill you if you decline. Let me ask you bluntly: Do you favor life as a slave? That is the only option remaining if you accept their assault on your life. I’m not suggesting you do this all tomorrow, but you should begin to prepare to do it when the government finally, inevitably arrives at that line in the sand across which you will not step.

It’s time you begin to turn this around on the leftists. Call them what they are: Torturers and rapists and murderers. All they have is naked force, and they’re not as frightened of using it as you are of refusing to comply. When people of faith are told that they must fund contraception that violates their conscience, it’s time to admit that you have nothing but a shell to lose, but with Obamacare, even that will be theoretical. Your wallet is not yours. Your home is not yours. Your life is not yours. One by one, bit by bit, the radical left is taking over. They are preparing to sweep away all constitutional constraints upon their actions. What are you doing to prepare? How will you resist? These are questions that you must confront.

Here’s the dirty secret none of them wish you to know, and it’s important to your frame of mind with respect to their attack on your values, your rights, and your lives. What the left hides from you is that in order for them to have power, you must submit. This is not the same submission to the laws you know and respect, that merely require you not do a wrong to others. This is a submission to aggressive laws that demand performance of some sort by you. This is the secret. Their attacks on you via the law require you to act. The laws you honor merely require that you not act in ways that cause harm to others. You do not steal, nor do you defraud others, and you certainly don’t murder. Their laws require you to take specific measures, to act on behalf of their policy agendas, either via your wallet, or via your compliance with their demands.

Therefore, this must be your standard in measuring which laws you must continue to obey, and which have only the power over you that you give them. I am not advocating anarchy, but instead a careful examination of laws on the basis that they either do or do not comply with the context the framers of our constitution laid down as the basis for all our laws. Again, I am asking you to think this through because the time will come when you will need to know, and you won’t necessarily have time to think it through later, or deliberate it much. This is your time to prepare, but the preparations mustn’t be nearly those necessary to survive off the grid, but to survive resisting the tyranny that is now unfolding.

Just as in your personal life, where you must draw clear boundaries lest others run over you, in this sense you must also know what it is you will refuse to do when the law makes demands. A number of Catholics and others of faith are now preparing to make such a stand. They have decided on drawing a line, and I want to warn you that some will abandon the line they have drawn, but others will refuse to walk back the boundaries they have laid down. This is the distinction, and it comes down to the principles you hold dear.

The left lives in fear of you discovering your own power. The left lives in dread of waking up in a world where you have learned to say “no” and mean it. That’s it. That’s your power. It is born of knowing what lines you will not cross no matter their threats and their coercion. Once you know this, there is nothing they can do to you that you cannot resist. I do not promise you painless resistance to tyranny, but I am telling you that it can be defeated. Start small to learn how well it works. Learn to make a fuss. Learn to call attention to their aggression. Learn to scream at the top of your lungs without shame “No means NO!” Place them in their proper frame, as murders, as rapists, and as thieves.

Many of us wonder how it is that people who ought to have known better can possibly bring themselves to vote for the statists who are undermining the country. Much like when the Titanic went down one-hundred years ago this coming tax-day, the elite are boarding the life-boats ahead of all the rest of us second-class and cargo-hold passengers. Another of the rich and famous is making his plans for exit to New Zealand, as this time Hollywood director James Cameron is looking to get out of Dodge. This should clear up the seeming contradiction, and just as I have told you that the elite don’t fear Obamacare as you must, if you love your life, for the same reasons, these same people don’t fear the collapse of the United States. They’ll simply get themselves to the front of the line for the lifeboats, as America hits the last in a string of icebergs and heads to the bottom.

Don’t worry! They love you! They have compassion for you. It’s just that, well, they don’t want their necks stretched when the rioting begins, so they’re going to get the hell out, which is an option that won’t be open to you. No, you won’t be able to liquidate your assets and pull out for safer harbor, because after all, in a collapsing economy with a crumbling currency, to whom will you sell your homes and your chattel, and in the world in which you’ll be selling it, what do you suppose it will be worth?

No, these elites can come up with all the excuses under the sun, but their actions speak louder than their words. It’s about to get exceedingly ugly, and as they lock you down in the cargo hold, singing the praises of the captain of our stricken ship of state, we’re stuck. They’ve made this mess, and now it will be we who will pay for it. Don’t worry too much, however, because we’re safe until we see them actually flee for their faraway havens. At that point, we’ll know. You shouldn’t fail to prepare as best you can.

Over the last week, I’ve been watching events unfolding with growing concern, and while I truly hate the idea that I might inadvertently offer myself up as just one more “Chicken Little,” I must in all candor tell you that because the sky is not falling now, do not assume it will not fall tomorrow. We’ve listened to the media talking heads, the pundits, the analysts, the economists, and even the politicians, and virtually all of them have made rosy predictions and hopeful prognostications for the immediate future, and your federal government feeds this view with its own phony numbers, endlessly amendable and adjustable statistics, and a common lie that consists of telling you: “It’s all going to be just fine.” As I’ve reported to you within the last few weeks, more downgrades were coming, and banks moved Euro liabilities under cover of FDIC, but now the downgrades are here. There will be more. When the Euro falls, it may very well take the United States with it. The time to prepare has very nearly expired, and there will be no turning back.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now going to tell you the truth, and I will place no bunting of red, white and blue around it, because you deserve to know it all lest you be left penniless and homeless and starving in the streets, unable to defend yourself from the cold, never mind the brigands that will likely swarm our cities: If the Euro collapses, the blow-back may not merely damage our economy, but thoroughly destroy it, and there is absolutely nothing we can do but deepen and worsen the results by more delaying tactics. Businesses are scrambling to come up with options if the Euro collapses, but the truth is that many of them are now in a position from which they will not recover. The choices you make now may mean the literal life or death of you, but it’s important that you know how we arrived here so that if ever there is a chance to arise anew, you will already know the answer. Even now, the statists of Europe are seeking ways to loot you. One world government will come riding in on the back of this nightmarish trojan horse.

It is a truism that few wish to acknowledge that one cannot consume more than one produces without eventually becoming subject to the sort of collapse we now face. It goes for nations as well as people, and just as people can hide the growing disparity between their financial underpinnings and their lifestyles for a time, nations can do so, and for even longer and to a greater degree because they can pilfer the value of the few still producing among their citizens. The problem is that just like individuals, even nations and unions of nations run afoul of nature’s basic truism requiring one to produce at least as much as one consumes. Herein lies the sickening truth of the impending Euro collapse, and the collapse of all those who have tied themselves to the Euro, including the United States. For far too long, far too many of us have lived without producing while others camouflaged their bankruptcy, willingly or [more often] unwillingly carrying their burdens. No nation can survive that. No people can sustain that.

The single currency of the European Union was advertised to make them more competitive as a trading bloc with the United States and Asia. In truth, that’s not the whole story. The Euro was also devised as the means by which to buy a little more time before the welfare states of Europe failed. No rational person ever thought otherwise, and every politician from Rome to Madrid to London to Paris and Berlin has known this for two generations or more. Your politicians right here in the good ol’ US of A have known it too, and yet when they had a chance to do something to change it, they instead accelerated it. You might ask: “Why?”

The answer has ever been the same, and it is the endless pursuit of power at the cost of any and every principle. This ambition has blinded mankind almost from the very start of the first civilizations. In our modern society, if you think politicians are the greatest bribe-takers, I urge you to think again: Modern politicians are the greatest source of offers in bribery but the greatest recipients are we the people. You wonder who is guilty? He who offers a bribe is powerless in the face of rejection, but he who accepts that bribe is guilty for all his days. In small increments, and in bits and pieces, the people of Europe were convinced to surrender their liberty in exchange for small bribes. Over time, the bribes became so large that to maintain them demanded more and more from the producers, until the relative few producers began to join the gravy train. While they bribed your silence and your complicity with the get from your neighbors’ pockets, be assured that they have been busily lining their own.

The Euro was concocted to hide this. All those nations whose fiscal problems are now manifest have always been unstable, and it’s because successive generations of politicians in those nations have been carrying out this sort of bribery of its citizenry from time immemorial. The French revolution was a Marxist affair, though not known by that name in those days, and nations such as Greece, Italy, and Spain haven’t been fiscally responsible for centuries. The disease is not heritable, but it often visits subsequent generations, because it is born of a bad idea that is passed from one to the next. That idea is statism. Statism is the ruin of mankind, and always has been, because its fundamental claim is that man exists to serve the state before himself. Whether statism took the form of Monarchy, Theocracy, Democracy, or some brand of Totalitarianism, it has ever been the bane of human existence, and yet no idea has more staying power among people than this one. It plays upon one of mankind’s greatest weaknesses: The temptation of covetousness and envy, born ever of sloth. It is enabled by the deadliest sins against nature, or nature’s God. It offers the false promise of a life without discomfort, effort, or pain, but in the end, it returns only misery.

A little more than a century ago, this idea began to catch on even in America. It has slowly grown as a cancer, and it has spread its tendrils through every community, on every level, and in all things. We’ve been hiding it, too. This disease has its own fuel, and the Federal Reserve provides it, and not surprisingly, has been providing it for most of the time in question: Easy money. Low interest rates and plentiful credit has made this possible. Consider the individual who runs up a pocket-full of credit cards, and struggles to make the monthly minimum payments. That’s our nation. Just as a weak-minded, or necessity-driven person can quickly run into debt to a dangerous level, so too can a country, and just as the easy availability of credit can act as an inducement for an individual, so does it work as a great temptation to nations. Nations fall when they permit politicians to bribe them with credit. Look around you: How many votes have been bought by a budget that is nearly two-thirds entitlement programs?

As has been reported this week, our own Federal Reserve loaned out over $7 Trillion at impossibly low interest rates. That’s half the GDP of the United States, in loans. Yet you may rightly ask: Where does the Fed get the money? Answer: It loans it into existence, i.e., it prints it. Only the promise of the debtor to pay gives it any value, but if that debtor defaults, well, the value of the dollar is diminished accordingly, but even if the debtor makes payments, there is always risk attached, and that risk is shown in inflation. This is why the Credit rating of the US Government has been such a big deal: It is the single largest debtor, and substantially so. As our government looks less and less likely to be able to repay its debts, while it continues to borrow money at an increasing pace, what do you suppose will happen to the value of your money? Why did Thanksgiving dinner cost an average of 13% more this year than last? Next year’s will cost 20% more, or worse.

This is the real truth of this situation, and unless and until you are ready to confront it, and to reject the myriad bribes from politicians, you are going to see things grow much worse. Perhaps most frightening, they may have successfully engineered not only the collapse of the Euro, but also the Dollar, and every other major currency on the planet, but what they will offer as a “fix” is a global currency that will make of us all slaves to the same masters. They will offer you more bribes, or at least threaten to take away the ones you currently enjoy, all so you will go along.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: With the current crisis ready to explode in Europe, and with the state of our own economy, under the willfully absent leadership of Barack Obama, we are waiting on the edge of collapse. This may be a most un-Merry Christmas, and it only promises to worsen. If we somehow survive as a nation, it will be surprising, but it will only have been possible if we reject calls for a global currency even at the expense of the bribes we are now so accustomed to taking that we believe them to be our entitlements. From now until then, you can spend your time in contemplation: Do you prefer life as a slave? Many of your neighbors will say “yes” without flinching. Somehow, somewhere, we must find the strength to say “No.” Prepare, my friends, and by the strength of your preparations may the republic endure.

Those who have been paying attention have known the Euro is in deep trouble, and much of it stems from the way in which is was created. Too many member states were admitted which had currency that was overvalued for the merger, and they’ve done nothing to curb ridiculous fiscal policies in those countries. This includes nations such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, but also to a lesser degree, France. Now, it’s time to pay the piper, and predictably, nobody wants to do so. Governments in Europe are now forced to consider what will happen if the Euro falls and the member states wind up reverting to their prior forms of currency. Some estimates suggest that GDP would decline in Europe among member states by as much as half, or more, and that widespread unemployment on a scale that would dwarf any previous depressions in scale and depth. In short, they’re now planning for a calamity, complete with riots and revolutions, and the reason is simple: It’s now a very real possibility. From a story in the UK Telegraph:

The Financial Services Authority this week issued a public warning to British banks to bolster their contingency plans for the break-up of the single currency.

Some economists believe that at worst, the outright collapse of the euro could reduce GDP in its member-states by up to half and trigger mass unemployment.

Analysts at UBS, an investment bank earlier this year warned that the most extreme consequences of a break-up include risks to basic property rights and the threat of civil disorder.

“When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Of course, many Americans are not moved by these tidings, somehow believing that we are insulated from a European crisis, but nothing could be further from the truth. If such drastic circumstances arise in Europe, the effects will be global, and so will be the civil unrest that accompanies it. This is the kind of calamity from which there is virtually no escape, anywhere on Earth. In such an environment, not only would our own exports to Europe would collapse, but also we would find our own currency in free-fall because we have so thoroughly tied it to the Euro. The defaults alone would wreck our own currency, and leave the United States in a similar situation.

Reuters is now carrying a story about the French and German effort to establish some fiscal controls to stave off a calamity, but the truth is that this will likely be too little, too late. Some authorities realize that this will be a stalling tactic at best, and are using the time it may buy to prepare for what is increasingly being seen as an inevitable collapse. From the Telegraph:

A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

“It’s in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare,” the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest.

As is now obvious, this is all a play for time. They’re buying time, but they’re not going to save things, and the Europeans seem to know it. The question thus becomes: What is our own government doing to prepare? What are they telling you to do in preparation? Nothing. Your own federal government is behaving irresponsibly in the face of this looming crisis.

For three years or more, the hand-writing has been on the wall, and our own government has obfuscated and lied about the direction of things, but has done little to prepare the American people for the possibilities now in the offing. Let me suggest to you that the recent sporadic reports of spikes in the purchase of survival supplies is an indicator that the American people have begun to figure it out without governmental warnings. No rational person can examine what’s been happening on the global economic and financial front and not have some sense of the very real dangers now accumulating. It remains a prudent course of action for Americans to prepare for any sort of emergency, but with the real possibility of complete Euro-zone collapse now seemingly imminent, prudence would dictate an uptick in preparedness planning. Our own currency has been tied too closely to the Euro currency to avoid the consequences of its collapse.